The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

“Sphinx, will you stop talking to the mirror?” I blurted out. “The me that’s in there is all wrong!” “Yep. You’ve noticed it too, haven’t you?” He turned around absentmindedly, as if he really was talking to someone else and I’d interrupted him. Then he focused on me, which was even more disconcerting. I felt a headache coming on. “All right,” he said. “Let’s forget about that you, the one living in the mirror.” “Are you saying he is not me?” “He is. But not quite. He is you seen through the lens of your image of yourself. We all look worse in the mirror than we actually are, didn’t you know that?” “I’ve never thought about it that way.”

the same time as he was standing up, he was also getting younger and younger with lightning speed, and when Ralph reached him he was met by a mere boy. Anyone would have written this off as a trick of light in a dimly lit corridor, a mirage that disappeared when seen up close. Anyone but Ralph.

Everyone chooses his own House. It is we who make it interesting or dull, and only then does it start working trying to change us.

If you could, for a moment, get unstuck from feeling tragically misunderstood, you might have some time left to understand others.

am Tabaqui, dispenser of nicks at first sight. Godfather for scores upon scores. In every incarnation the master of tales, the royal fool, and the keeper of Time. And I can always tell a dragon from a person.

He kept his word. He’s never done anything that someone else would not be doing. He was quiet, pointedly so. He did have fits from time to time, breaking and ruining everything in his wake, but that happened rarely. There was just one thing he did allow himself—chasing away our bad dreams. I saw how he did it: he would jump up all of a sudden, walk over to someone who was asleep, whisper indistinctly in his ear, and go back. We were no longer awakened by screams—either our own or someone else’s. Our nights became more peaceful. Except for those that came after Wolf . . . I catch that thought by the tail and try to turn it back. DO NOT THINK ABOUT THAT!

I realized that the trap had sprung, that it was already too late. I was chained again; not an angel this time but rather a demon, because that was what he needed, and I always morphed into whatever was needed, with only one exception.

“We know everything. Anything and everything that is the House!” I deliberately don’t mention the basement, but my bragging suddenly rings true. I sense this truth and marvel at it. There. That’s what we were looking for. For everything that is the House. There comes a time in the life of everyone to start asking who their great-grandfather was and to listen to the family lore, so Sphinx and I descended into the basement and told the musty tales to ourselves. I shiver. We became too much a part of this place—and it, of us. It’s almost as though we had created it. There was nothing in the basement where it mentioned the ghost restlessly roaming the rooms looking for linens to count.

I’m overwhelmed by the desire to Jump, to roam in the fields of the Underside of the House. But I can’t. For “by succumbing to your desires you lose the self and turn into their slave.” This maxim is all that remains in my mind of the old Jumpers’ Code, destroyed during the Troubles. Sightless One can probably quote it chapter and verse, but for me that one snippet is plenty.

We knew not what we were doing when we christened Shadow as Shadow. Wasn’t that inviting the fate that did befall him: to wander eternally, to cleave and be one flesh, to be always silent? Most of the other ghosts I know are quite chatty. He’s the only one to keep total silence.

Tell me this, though. When you were painting that dragon on the ceiling . . . you wouldn’t happen to have drawn it a heart? Shot through by an arrow? You know, accidentally.” “No,” I say. “That would have been too corny. All I did was give it an eye. In accordance with the instructions received in a dream.”

It is not easy to just abandon a dream. Much easier to complicate the road to it than to accept that it could never be achieved.

So now every time PRIP directs his full-of-loathing stare at his daughter he meets Fleabag’s rictus instead. Which is only fair, since Rat herself never looks at him directly. Only through her badges, the little round mirrors slung around her neck. She’s been seeing him in small fragments for so long now she can’t even imagine him in any way other than a series of reflections. She can’t perceive him as a whole. Not that she’d wish to.

“Wake up,” I pleaded. “Fight, or he’ll break you.” “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I seem to be a bit out of practice lately.” While we were thus conversing Black decided to finish the job. He took a step toward Blind and aimed a swing at him so hard that, had it landed, we’d have had to haul Blind down to the first and put him next to Crab. Blind ducked and appeared to lightly touch Black in return. Black gasped and fought for breath for at least a minute, and after that it was all over. I didn’t even have to look to know how it would end. I see . . . Blind tiptoeing away from Black, hunched, eyes half-closed, lips fixed in a grin. He’s not circling, he’s not stepping. It’s more of a dance. A soft, silent dance of Death. There is an exceedingly beautiful and fascinating quality about it, which I’ve observed dozens of times and never could figure out where it came from. It’s that leap into a different world, a world without pain, without blindness, where he stretches time, making each second last an eternity, where everything is just a game, even though it’s the kind of game where he could flay someone alive or turn him inside out with a flick of a finger. I know that for a fact even though I’ve never seen him actually do it. I feel the scent of madness on him in those moments, too pronounced not to scare me half to death. In that strange world of his he turns into something that is not human, something that creeps closer, slinks away, flies on rustling wings, spits pois...

The Cages are conducive to introspection, unless you’re stuck there for too long. The longer you sit in them, the harder it becomes not to give in to fear, and that kicks all the thoughtfulness right out of your head. But that’s if you’re alone; for two it wasn’t unheard of to last a week.

“I’m thinking how the same story comes out completely differently depending on who’s telling it. And for all that, none of you is really lying.” “Because whoever’s telling the story creates the story. No single story can describe reality exactly the way it was.

“You’re going to bungle it. Definitely. You’re going to twist it the way it suits you. Scribblers always do that. Not a single word of what was, only what they thought they saw.”

“You see,” he says, “life does not go in a straight line. It is like circles on the surface of the water. Every circle, every loop is composed of the same stories, with very few changes, but no one notices that. No one recognizes those stories. It is customary to think that the time in which you find yourself is brand new, freshly made and freshly painted. But the world only ever draws repeated patterns. And there aren’t that many of them.”

“Sixteen,” Whitebelly says, darkening. “So?” “Why do you need to be in my diary? The truth, please.” “This is my first loop,” he says in a flat voice. “I need to anchor myself everywhere I can, or I’ll get thrown out.”

One of the last to evacuate is Jackal. “What do they want?” I ask him. “Who are they?” “Empty skins,” he answers, busily unspooling his hook on a rope. “They are looking for someone who they think would fill them.”

Alexander

“What happened, happened long ago. Only yesterday for me, but long ago for everyone else. We all need miracles, Sphinx. Some of them are possible and some are not, so we choose to pursue the possible. But then, after you’ve chosen, it turns out that you are not strong enough to achieve even that.

Ancient taught him to. Now is not the time. But when did he stop doing that? Simply looking. Simply seeing. Simply living in the present day. Not yesterday and not tomorrow. When did his hours and days grow diminished with the fears and regrets?